NADIA SWALLOWED CONVULSIVELY AND TRIED to be as quiet as possible. Terror had turned her bowels to liquid, and it was taking all her concentration to keep from vomiting. She couldn’t make them stop though. Jonas had already been shot because of her and Caleb too, though she knew that one was only a flesh wound. She wasn’t going to let them die for her. She was going to get back to the cabin, and then she would find some way to stop him. As the lives of these two brave and valiant men stood in the gap between her and danger, Nadia felt selfish for placing them there. Her life wasn’t worth theirs, and if she’d known that this maniac was going to take measures this far to get to her, she would never have involved them. Prayers she hadn’t uttered since childhood fell from her lips in silent appeal as she continued to keep up. They weren’t for her. They were for them. Don’t let them die, God. Please. Please, take me if you have to but, oh God don’t. Let. Them. Die.

An eternity later they reached the cabin, but Caleb didn’t take them directly to it. He rushed them to the car instead, and braced Jonas against it. “Jonas.” His voice had that bark in it still that caused Nadia to flinch, but it brought Jonas’ head up. “Hold here. I need to check the cabin before we go in. You good?” He looked hard into his partners face as Jonas pulled his own weapon from its holster and took it in a two-handed grip.

“I’m good.” Jonas’ voice was so weak she would never have believed him capable of sounding like that. “Visions shit though. Did the bastard blind me?” Nadia thought he didn’t sound overly upset at the idea, but Caleb was shaking his head.

“No. Bullet sliced your scalp open is all. Your ugly mug is going to get uglier with a Frankenstein scar across it now.”

“Great. No more worries over what to wear on Halloween.”

“Jokes?” Nadia was flabbergasted. “We’re being hunted like moose and you two are joking?” Her shocked whisper sounded a little too weak-willed damsel for her liking, so she took a breath and tried to get a grip on her emotions. “What do you want me to do?” she asked, ready to grab a gun herself and help sweep the house or stand watch over Jonas. Whatever they needed.

“Get under the car, and don’t come out until I call you.”

“What?” She could not have heard him right. “You want me to hide under the car?”

“Yes,” Caleb said.

“Good plan,” Jonas agreed.

“I can’t hide while you risk your lives for me. Let me help.” She widened her stance, and tried to school her features into an expression that Caleb would interpret as capable.

It must not have worked, because he just grunted, grabbed her by the arm and pushed her to her knees. “Baby. This is what you hired us for. You think this is the first time either of us has been in a fire fight?”

“Not even close,” Jonas joined in.

“You want to help? You help by keeping safe, so I don’t have to split my attention between you and the perp. You out of harm’s way is the best thing you can do for me.”

It made sense. Made perfect sense, and he seemed deadly calm right now. They both did, and that was saying something for Jonas, considering he was still bleeding and his face had been split. Nadia nodded reluctantly, but first threw herself against Caleb with a sob. “Oh, God. Please don’t get killed. Please just promise you won’t get killed.”

He hugged her back and kissed her on the crown of her head as he shoved her under the car.

“I promise. You too. Stay safe. You fucking know you are more than just a job to us, so do as you’re told. And remember. Stay put until I bring you out myself.” Terror for the men was a smothering blanket that weighted her down until she felt buried alive under it. But, letting them see that, letting them know the extent of her fear would only cost time they didn’t have, so she sucked it in and faced what needed to be faced.

“Yes, sir,” she agreed and slid under.

“Nadia, Reach one hand out and hold on to my ankle. That way I know you’re still there,” Jonas ordered and she did without hesitation. After about thirty seconds a horrible flaw in this plan occurred to her.

“Jonas! You are practically blind right now. What if he comes for you while Caleb is checking the house? Get under here with—” A shot rang out that was louder and larger than any that had been fired before, and Nadia screamed as her body jolted.

“You get him?” Jonas called out, sounding bored.

“Of course. What else did you expect?” Caleb answered, and she thought he sounded smug.

“Well that worked like a charm,” Jonas said, easing down carefully to sit on the ground with his back against the tire. “Wounded bait does the trick again.”

“Always does,” Caleb said from a closer distance and she watched, confused and baffled, as his boots sauntered in and out of her line of sight. “It’s a shame really how gullible and predictable some scum bags are. That was almost too easy.”

“Yeah. True that,” Jonas agreed, then added. “Only next time, you get shot and I’ll play the hero.”

“I’ll give you that point. Sucks to be you.” Nadia assumed that Caleb must consider his own bullet wound not worth mentioning.

“Umm, can I come out now?” Nadia asked, since they were chatting like the danger had passed.

“Not just yet, baby,” Jonas said. “Give Caleb time to make sure he’s dead or if not, then cuffed and neutralized.”

“Okay.” Made sense to her. Suddenly, at the thought that there could be a dead person out there, she no longer had any desire whatsoever of coming out. The silence was deafening however, so she asked, “Do you know what happened?”

“We led the bastard back here so Caleb could run into the house and take him out from one of the upper story windows with his riffle. The cabin is situated so that we can get a clear shot from anywhere within a hundred feet of this place from any direction. It was just a matter of whether or not Caleb could get upstairs and in position before the asshole managed to get in his.”

“Oh God.” Nadia was horrified. That was quite a gamble Jonas took and she reached out to squeeze his leg in a grip hard enough that she felt her nails bite into his skin. Thankful beyond words that the worst hadn’t happened.

There was grunting and scuffling. Since the grunting was coming from two different voices, Nadia made the assumption that the stalker had survived, and in spite of everything, she was relieved. Not for him, no she could care less about him after the hell he’d put them through, but for Caleb. She hated the thought of him having another man’s blood on his hands. No matter the reason.

“Goddamn this guy’s heavy,” Caleb said and dropped his prisoner to the ground with a grunt. “It’s safe now, Nadia. You can come out. But I don’t think you are going to like what you see.”

Nadia took a deep breath and bellied her way out from under the car. When she stood up and got her first look at her stalker, a cry of denial burst out from her chest with terrible betrayal.

“Johnny?” Her agent. He’d been her agent from the beginning. He read every manuscript she’d ever written and handled everything for her in her career. “You? You’re my stalker?” Tears fell and her lip trembled, as memories of late-night deadline crunches and celebratory dinners flashed through her mind like a movie montage. “I don’t understand?”

“You wanna give her the courtesy of an explanation?” Caleb nudged Johnny with the barrel of his rifle.

Johnny’s face folded into lines of disgust. “Me explain to her?” He spat with more venom than she thought any human capable of. “She’s the one who should be explaining to me! Why Nadia? Why? After all these years I’ve waited for you and slaved for you, and you let them have you? These mutants? When I’ve been making do with hookers and hand jobs?”

Nadia took a step back from him, and thought for the second time that day that she was going to throw up.

“No. No Johnny. You started this months before I hired them to protect me. And I hired them to protect me from you.”

“That was just foreplay!” His expression turned pleading, and bile rolled in her belly like a witches brew. “See. After your last book, I finally got it! You wanted me to pursue you. You’ve been telling me how to all along in your books, and when you wrote Casper, I knew it was the sign that you were ready.”

“Casper?” Nadia was horrified anew. “Johnny, Casper was a psychotic killer. He dies at the end. The real hero kills him.”

“That was just code. I saw that. I knew that. You couldn’t have a boring hero come out and do all the really kinky things. Society wouldn’t accept our kind of love. That was why you had to kill him off. But I knew the truth. I knew that was what you really wanted from me. All the really good kink that Casper dealt out. You were spelling out every single one of my fantasies in glorious detail. I was so thrilled that you knew! That finally you were showing me that you knew, and that it was time for us. You were ready to be mine.”

Nadia shook her head as she saw true madness in a face she had always believed a friend. When he saw her backing away, his eyes widened, and he struggled to get up. There was a bullet in his leg, effectively keeping him down, and Caleb added to that by clamping a hand on his shoulder.

“Then you got confused and let these creeps into your house. Into your body! My body, Nadia! You hear me, slut? You’re mine! I’ve waited long enough, and we’re going to be together. Just help me out of these cuffs. I’ll shoot them. Finish them off and we can run away together. We’ll be out of the country before anyone knows. You can write under a new name in any country you want. You hear me any—”

“Enough of this shit,” Caleb said as he brought the rifle down on the back of Johnny’s head, knocking him out cold.

“Thank God,” Jonas said in a tone of disgust, “what the hell took you so long?”

Nadia looked at the sad scene in front of her and could hardly believe her own eyes. All three men were bloody and bruised. Two of them she’d loved for less than a week, while the other she’d loved for more than a decade. With a hand clamped to her stomach, no longer able to hold it off, Nadia ran for the house and the bathroom. She didn’t come out for a very long time.